Recent Silver Dollar Blog Posts

How to mint a Morgan Dollar

I scanned this picture from The Comprehensive Catalogue and Encyclopedia of U.S. Morgan and Peace Silver Dollars by Leroy Van  Allen and A. George Mallis. I think it's an excellent example of how a piece of fine silver makes it's way to becoming a counted, weighed bag full of Morgan Dollar's ready for circulation! 

Let's start at the beginning first they didn't just use silver from the mines they also re-used silver that had already been through the process. Any extra clips or condemned coins that didn't make the cut were thrown back into the melting pot. 900 parts per thousand of silver was mixed with 100 parts per thousand of copper in the melting pot. The hot melted combination of silver and copper were poured into a cast to produce ingots. Assay samples were taken at this point to ensure proper fineness tolerance.

The result is a nicely shaped perfectly proportioned ingot. Now it was time to send that ingot to the rollers so you could punch out the blank planchets. As the the blank planchets went over the sieve any clippings or off-sized planchets were sent back to the the beginning stages to be re-melted. Even back then they were doing a good job at recycling! 

Time for to bring on the heat! The planchets were then annealed at about 1100*F. Annealed means to heat and allow to slowly cool this process will remove internal stresses and toughen the planchet. Once polished and lean they were now treated as money.  Every department is held accountable at this stage for how many planchets they received and sent to the next step. 

We're almost holding a Morgan dollar.... Time to work on the raised edges on the rim, weigh inspect and off to be struck. Once there were a 1,000 coins in the bag they were done! The scales they used through out the process are extremely sensitive. This last one could detect if there was plus one or minus one coin. There had to be exactly 1,000 silver dollars in the bag! 

1887 Silver Dollar

1887 Silver Dollar

1887  Silver Dollar
Mintage Circulation strikes: 20,290,000
Proofs: 710
There is no mint mark on the coin which means it was minted in Philadelphia.

1887-S Silver Dollar
Mintage Circulation Strikes: 1,771,000
Proofs: 0
Minted in San Francisco– S

1887-O Silver Dollar
Mintage Circulation strikes: 11,550,000
Proofs: 0
Minted in New Orleans– O

Random Facts of 1887

First Official Groundhog Day On Feb. 2nd, 1887 in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania of course. 

First man to ride a bicycle around the world staring in San Francisco and ending there too.

Fort Keogh, Montana world's largest snowflakes are reported about 15 inches wide and 8 inches thick! Now that is one big snowflake!

The electoral count has been around since 1887 when congress created it to avoid any disputed national elections. 

U.S. Senate approves a naval base lease of Pearl Harbor

At age 6 blind-deaf Helen Keller begins being instructed by teacher Anne Sullivan

Fishing rod of telescoping steel tubes is patented by  Everett Horton

Earmuffs were patented this same year by Chester Greenwood of Maine

Barbed wire is patented by Rowell Hodge

Carlisle D. Graham makes yet another trip down the Niagara waterfall in a barrel. During his time he went down Niagara Falls 4 times in a barrel surviving them all.

Sherlock Holmes makes it's way to print in "Study in Scarlet"

Sir John Layton Jarvis, 1st British race horse trainer knighted